Ubuntu :: Best Practices For Multi Purpose Usb Boot
May 15, 2011
I am in the process of creating a USB multi boot with a variety of utilities for working on pc's as well as multiple distributions for testing via live use and for installation. From what I've found YUMI is the tool to use to create this. Is that right or does anyone have a better tool to use? As long as YUMI is the best tool, does anyone have any best practices to pass on? I'm thinking of relating to casper-rw, preventing any fragmentation issues and etc. Anything else to be thinking of as I create this would be very much welcomed. I'm planning to start with a 16GB stick but I'm curious about how much space others are finding they need. I don't know if 16GB is way high or low.Anyway, what all can you pass on to me and others in the forums about planning for and using a multi boot usb.
I've always been confused about this issue of boot partitions. In the past when I install linux I usually have 2-3 partitions.
1. Main OS partition mounted on / 2. Storage partition mounted on /home 3. Swap partition
Why and when would I need to have a boot partition? Even if I dual boot two OSs, I just make one more partition for that other OS. So what's the purpose of a boot partition?
I have 4 OS's on a publicly used pc. I want to hide the boot menu on GRUB2 and have it appear only when I press and hold the SHIFT key during boot. Will changing in /etc/default/grub GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT to 0 safely accomplish this goal? Also, what is the command for deleting all of the former kernel upgrades from the boot menu?
Problem: I have installed two Ubuntu servers, 10.04 32-bit and 10.10 64-bit, in a multi-boot environment (also have FDOS and WinXPsp3). The 64-bit will not boot because grub can't find the UUID for the disk with the 64-bit system.
Brief Background: Installed 10.04 LTS two months ago with no problems. 10.04 is in a primary partition on hda with FDOS.
Installed 10.10 (64-bit) in a new primary partition on the same hd. The install seemed to go ok, but the MBR and the fs on the 10.04 were corrupted; could not boot. Restored drive, and rebuilt grub.
Installed 10.10 on separate hd (hdb). In grub step all OS's were recognized so I pointed the grub to hda. Grub failed to boot.
Rebuilt grub from 10.04 on hda. All systems recognized but 10.10 will not boot because it says it cannot locate the UUID specified.
Compared the grub.cfg for both systems, the UUID specified for hdb is the same. Also, when I mount the drive for 10.10 on the 10.04 system the drive UUID is consistent.
I know I must be missing some thing, but I know not what. Have searched and can't find any clues. All other OS's boot ok.
Hardware: AMD64 4GB, 2 internal IDE drives (hda and hdb), 1 internal SATA (hdc WinXP), various USB and Firewire Drives (no bootable systems).
I have Lenny, and Jaunty Jackaope installed on the same hdd. Jaunty Jackaope was installed 2nd so it has control of grub (I don't know if that is the correct expression) I want to remove Jaunty Jackalope however I know from past experience that after I do this I will no longer be able to boot into Lenny as I will get a grub error at startup. How to I give boot/grub to Lenny so that I can remove the other operating system?
I'm trying to install Fedora onto a computer that has Windows XP on the first of two SATA drives. Windows 7 is on the second drive.
I installed Fedora no problems on a 14 gig free space I created on the first drive and told it where and what my other OS's were. Fine so far. I didn't tell it to overwrite the MBR on the XP (first) drive. I took the second option which I "think" put the boot loader on the fedora partition.
All good - till I rebooted and I just saw my Windows 7 loader with my options for XP and Windows 7 but no Fedora.
So, if I overwrite the MBR on the first drive, will that mean I can't access my Windows 7 installation?
I have a script that is tar'ing a directory for backup purposes. I am wondering what the best practices are in Linux for where to move the tar file to.I read the 'Linux File System Hierarchy' pdf, but I didn't find any clear direction on where I should write the tar file to in the local file system.Is it taboo to create a /backups folder because some other location is where best practices say to write a tar file that is being kept for backup purposes?
I am writing the files to the local file system, but then backing the entire server up to tape. So I know that I need to keep the backups on a long term media incase the server goes belly up. Again, I'm just looking for best practices for where to write the back to the local file system for local retention.
Where do people generally put third-party source code that must be configured and compiled? For years I've using my home directory for that, but there must be a better way. Are there general standards, or best practices, or guidelines on where to put the software? /usr/local? /usr/src? Is there a document that discusses this?
Most of us know the basic security practices on Windows:
Use a limited account Set a password Disable unused services Uninstall bloatware Antivirus / Antimalware etc.
I haven't ran linux as my main desktop computer before, so I don't know how to properly secure it. I have heard linux is supposed to be more secure than Windows, but I know that the default settings of anything are rarely secure. What are some things I should do as a new Linux user to secure my desktop system from attack?
I am trying to reduce my uptime of my servers. I would like to have a way to bring the systems down during off hours, an come back online during first use. I know about WOL (wake on lan) found in the bios, but it seems as if the OS is missing something to complete the configuration.Are there any good docs (of which I havent found any yet, which is why I ask) on this topic? How about best practices to assist in power management?
Regarding domain names for LDAP root, you should use something like dc = domain, dc = country eg ar, cl, is br. or better use some other domain?That is, suppose the root domain is dominio.es Is it advisable to do so? I ask because I have seen many implementations (especially Microsoft AD), which states rather dominio.local or dominio.int.
I am wondering if it is possible to put multiple distros on one DVD. I am wanting to put Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Fedora 15 on one DVD so that I can pop it into the cd drive and choose to boot from the DVD into any one of them. I know I can just load them on a virtual machine but I will be using different computers and don't want to install it on all the machines.
i just installed ubuntu last night, with dual boot towards xp and ubuntu 9.1 on my pc. But was wondering if there is a way to switch bettween the two withOUT rebooting.
I want to install Ubuntu 11.04 along my current Windows XP installation and I am trying to figure out the following:
1. How to recognize the relationship between Windows disk drive letters and the Linux disk drive indicators like /dev/sda/
2. How to configure the multi boot?
3. Where to place the Linux swap file?
4. Which Linux filesystem is the best for general use?
The specifics:
Pair of identical Seagate SATA2 80GB drives partitioned in Windows as follows:
When looking through the Ubuntu installation to be configured, I assume that drive 0 is /dev/sda where I have 3 partitions sda1, sda5, sda3. Drive 1 would be /dev/sdb with partitions sdb1, sdb5, sdb3 and I am not sure which corresponds to the Windows drive letters.
I would like to dedicate the empty drive K: for the Linux installation, swap space & data, and use minimal amount of space of drive C: for the dual boot.
I have an ATI Radeon HD 3300 on-board video chipset, and an ATI Radeon HD 4350 PCI card. What I want is to have both displays available from one mouse/keyboard. I want to play media on one and have the other as my main desktop.The problem is that with Xinerama enabled, KDE desktop effects do not work (KDE says XComposite and XDamage are not available, even though I explicitly enabled them as extensions in the xorg.conf file), and performance is quite bad. Without Xinerama enabled, performance is great, desktop effects work great, but there's a lot of trouble with full-screen video, and the KWin window manager does not apply in the second display (although I can run a second instance of KWin on :0.1).
Now that Ubuntu 10.04 has multi-touch capabilities built-in, if I do not have a multi-touch screen or surface device, can I get 2 USB mice and get 2 pointers on the screen? One for the right hand and one for the left hand as I am ambidextrous, and would find it very convenient to have 2 mice.
I have a 500G disk and want to setup it as a test machine with many partitions.
The first partition is for Windows XP. It works. I use USB disk to boot Ubuntu, so I can use Ubuntu's command dd to backup my XP partition.
Than I set more than 10 partitions. Then Ubuntu booted from USB does not always work. It always boots, but when I open a terminal, I get funny characters.. It seems the problem is something to do with number or size of partitions.
Is there a limit for number of partitions or size of partitions?
Can some one point me in the right direction as to how to fix this.I have mint 10 gnome on /dev/sda1, then I have mint 10 kde on /dev/sda3, all working great. I have just installed ubuntu 10.10 on to /dev/sda4 all good after the first reboot (when asked to remove disc) there is a screen that shows all of my boot options (ie ubuntu 10.10 mint 10 gnome mint 10 kde) pick ubutnu do a full upgrade including new kernal reboot and at the screen it only shows ubuntu 10.10.result of boot info script below.
There have been many postings on doing Raid 0 setups, and it seems the best way looks like softRaid, but there were some arguments for fakeRaid in dual boot situations. I've seen some posts on dual boot windows/linux in Raid 0, but I was hoping to do a multi-boot using a grub partition, with several Linux distros and Windows 7. There will also be a storage disk for data, but not in the array. From what I gather, I'll need a grub partition which can only reside on one of the two disks, one swap partition on each disk, then the rest I can stripe.
I've got two 73GB WD raptor drives to use for the OS's and programs. I'm just getting my feet wet with the terminal in linux (Ubuntu makes it way too easy to stay in GUI), and the inner workings of the OS, so I have several questions:
Is this going to be worth the effort? Obviously I'm trying to boost performance in boot and run times, but with Grub on a single drive, will I see much gain?
Does this sound like the right methodology (softRAID)? I only have two spare PCI slot's, which don't seem like they would be condusive to hardware raid, but someone who knows more could convince me otherwise.
Anyone successfully using VNC client on a Mac to control a Debian server?I have the vncserver setup on the Debian machine properly. But I'm having problems connecting to it from both a PowerMac running Tiger and a MacBookPro running leopard.I can connect no problem from a machine running Slack12.2, have not setup port forwarding on my router to connect remotely yet.My Debian machine is running the latest stable release of squeeze with KDE4.I originally tried this with RealVNC Enterprise for OSX but I'm not gonna buy it so I need another alternative after the 30 day trial ends as they have no free version for OSX. The situation is that I do freelance graphic design on the PowerMac with Cinema4D and Photoshop so I spend most of my time on that machine which is located in my home studio in my attic. Aside from the MacBook and a Dell desktop(family machine)all my other machines and network hardware are in the basement. So to go from the attic to the basement everytime I need to do something on another machine is not practical, and the only other machine I need to access on a regular basis is the Debian box in the basement, this makes the most sense.
I also have a 14 year old living in the house and he's fascinated by all this and will meddle in anything he gets the chance to so all the Linux machines and network hardware need to be behind lock and key.
I want to code some simple personal projects on the Unix-like partition while doing everything else on my XP partition. Can someone recommend the solution that takes up the smallest footprint in size and processing power that still delivers value? I want to learn how to code in a Unix environment.
I'm trying Cygwin but my first impression is its a bit clumsy. Would a dual boot with BeOS be better? And how would I do it? EDIT: I need to be able to run both OS'es at the same time. This is very important for me. my laptop is pretty crappy and that's why I ask for something that has a low CPU/RAM footprint.
I would like to create a multi boot dvd with multiple distros on it. I just got a linux mag with 5 distros on it and all of them boot!! This is by far the coolest thing i've seen. How is this done? Is there a program that will let me select more than one iso image and then create a bootable disk with all the distros I want on it and create a menu that will boot to the different distros?
I'm looking for a quick an dumbass noobies proof why of creating a multi boot dvd, the distro's that i want on the disc are;
mint 8 (custom 1gb iso created with remastersys as a live dist) knoppix v6.2cd (690.99mb) nimblex (custom 527.1mb build created on nimblex website) parted magic (49.9mb) puppy 4.3.1 (104.9mb)
i have done some googling and it's gone right over my head so if theres a dumbass noob based way please could someone share it or a gui based app similar to unetbootin-377
Windows XP on sda1 Backtrack on sda5-6 Ubuntu 11.04 on sda7-8 Ubuntu 10.10 on sda9-10
I want to remove Ubuntu 11.04 (partitions sda7-8). I tried using GParted from Ubuntu 10.10, but it says that I have to unmount logical partitions with a number higher than the one being removed.
I plan to clean install Windows 7 on my system ( currently windows XP ). At the moment I have Windows XP professional together with Linux Ubuntu and I want to keep using Ubuntu. When I do the clean install for Windows 7 Professional, does it leave the multi-bootloader in place? If not, what should I do to bring the multiboot-loader back? I have a CD of Ubuntu 9.10.2.6.31.14. My installed Ubuntu is version 9.10.2.6.31.18.
I have a MacbookPro 5,1 with 2GBRAM, which successfully dual-boots with Ubuntu 9.04 since a year. I wish to urgently install ubuntustudio, and also wish to have one or perhaps two more partitions, where I may install the latest Ubuntu as well as another Linux distro.
Typically, think of a multi-boot scenario: Mac OSX 10.5.x Ubuntu 9.04 <<--working production install, not to be messed. UbuntuStudio 10.4 Ubuntu 10.10 [just a few days left!] Fedora or Knoppix or Debian.
if possible, i'd also like to keep one partition free and unallocated, or reformat a partition, if i ever need to install windows. any thing i'd need to watch out for in this? I've got no extra or free partitions, only free space on the mac partition, that i'd like to carve out and allocate to partitions. Also, before i begin, is there a way I can clone my entire mac+linux hard-disk so in the event of a failure i can get *everything* back, mac as well as ubuntu? I bought a hd of an identical size, but use it with Time Machine. I'd rather use it to clone the entire hd.
I recently upgrade my grub to grub2 and had problem to boot debian. After trying to fix it myself, I played around with grub-image-ntldr, my debian now works ok, but I cant boot my XP anymore.
Now when I try to boot XP, I got "No grldr" message. If I copy my ntldr and rename it to grldr, my XP will boot ok. So it seems that when I try to boot XP it doesn't chainload ntldr anymore, it is looking for grldr.
I tried to change "chainload +1" to "chainload /ntldr", it complains about invalid signature. Does anyone knows why my grub now using grldr instead of ntldr?
